EASTI HatcheryGrowout
- Thread starter PeterIMA
- Start date
Jaime,
Yes, if you wish to make a donation send a check to me and I will wire it to Ferdinand. Mike Kirda contacted me and is making a donation. I also have sent a donation. For more details on how to make a donation, send me a PM giving me your email or other means to communicate. Donations are probaby not tax deductibel in the USA or Canada, but I will arrange that those who donate get a letter of thanks from EASTI.
Peter
Yes, if you wish to make a donation send a check to me and I will wire it to Ferdinand. Mike Kirda contacted me and is making a donation. I also have sent a donation. For more details on how to make a donation, send me a PM giving me your email or other means to communicate. Donations are probaby not tax deductibel in the USA or Canada, but I will arrange that those who donate get a letter of thanks from EASTI.
Peter
By no means to put salt in an open wound and my condolences to those out there putting there blood,sweat and tears into this project. Great thread, Ive just kinda recently started browsing this forum and am soo glad it is here. Thank you Peter for allowing me to escape Sacramento allbeit only 15 min, the pictures were awesome and really took me there allowed me to look around and put a face to a name.
Steve, I would love the opportunity to be that Great White Hope of a tourist on your boat! And prove my white worthiness :lol:
One day maybe....
But back on topic, I was really thinking about the debate that was waged on the viable option of mariculture v aquaculture. My first tree hugging reaction was "but your still reaping resources that your not replenishing in regards to fry and larva, the food chain reprocussions envolved in doing so" but then immidiately tried to carry the spirit of the debate with myself " but thousands of larva and fry die naturally,or get eaten.. thats when I kinda recoiled into the potential of balances upset due to one or a few's interpretation of what is sustainable. Bottom line regardless it is by far the lesser of two evils if one was considered as such in any form of opposition like aquaculture v larva reering, or net caught.
But then this thread progressed and tapped sadly upon a very real dilema. And IMO is a major crutch and in light of recent events may pose to be to financially draining to investors and others involved. Typhoons, sunamis, hurricanes and tidal waves. To build then rebuild every other season, concrete walls may help some, but nature is relentless and will always persevere. Not to mention the workers directly, and the equipment they base there lively hood on. Is there a plan about this? Or is the only option to rebuild and hope.
I dont mean to come off presumptuous to anyone in my limited scope of things, and if I am I apologize.
-Justin
Steve, I would love the opportunity to be that Great White Hope of a tourist on your boat! And prove my white worthiness :lol:
One day maybe....
But back on topic, I was really thinking about the debate that was waged on the viable option of mariculture v aquaculture. My first tree hugging reaction was "but your still reaping resources that your not replenishing in regards to fry and larva, the food chain reprocussions envolved in doing so" but then immidiately tried to carry the spirit of the debate with myself " but thousands of larva and fry die naturally,or get eaten.. thats when I kinda recoiled into the potential of balances upset due to one or a few's interpretation of what is sustainable. Bottom line regardless it is by far the lesser of two evils if one was considered as such in any form of opposition like aquaculture v larva reering, or net caught.
But then this thread progressed and tapped sadly upon a very real dilema. And IMO is a major crutch and in light of recent events may pose to be to financially draining to investors and others involved. Typhoons, sunamis, hurricanes and tidal waves. To build then rebuild every other season, concrete walls may help some, but nature is relentless and will always persevere. Not to mention the workers directly, and the equipment they base there lively hood on. Is there a plan about this? Or is the only option to rebuild and hope.
I dont mean to come off presumptuous to anyone in my limited scope of things, and if I am I apologize.
-Justin
Justin stated:
"But your still reaping resources that your not replenishing in regards to fry and larvae"
Actually, we are doing stock enhancement in the sense that the CBUGS hatchery growout program with the villagers requires that 10% of the fish reared be restocked on the reef.
With regards to your concerns about what is "sustainable" we are getting involved with the creation of Coastal Resource Management Plans (CRMP) that involve habitat mapping, underwater surveys, and zoning strategies to facilitate restoration of habitats through habitat protection (seagrass beds, mangroves, coral reefs) so they can regenerate.
Sustainable is a tricky word (like ecology). It is difficult to know what the population levels should be in an unaltered state, if the habitats are already degraded. However, I have some difficulty in understanding your points in the third paragraph of your posting, especially the last sentence.
Hurricanes have affected the ORA hatchery in Florida, so typhoons in the Philippines are not different concerning their impact on EASTI's hatchery in Banao. The more infrastructure one builds into a hatchery, the more there is to lose (especially for the investors). In the case of Banao, the raceways were built out of bamboo and rubber tarpaulins. EASTI managed to salvage the pumps and much of the other paraphenalia. So, the financial loss was not big in comparison to ORA's.
Site selection is critical. Ferdinand selected the Banao site close to where the larvae and the plankton occur naturally in high abundance. It also allowed water to be pumped from the ocean (ORA uses wells). The new EASTI hatchery involves substantially more infrastructure and a better site (more protected from prevailing winds, typhoons etc) has been selected. So, there is a plan to deal with these types of problems and it is being implemented. Construction started at another location before typhoon Durian happened.
"But your still reaping resources that your not replenishing in regards to fry and larvae"
Actually, we are doing stock enhancement in the sense that the CBUGS hatchery growout program with the villagers requires that 10% of the fish reared be restocked on the reef.
With regards to your concerns about what is "sustainable" we are getting involved with the creation of Coastal Resource Management Plans (CRMP) that involve habitat mapping, underwater surveys, and zoning strategies to facilitate restoration of habitats through habitat protection (seagrass beds, mangroves, coral reefs) so they can regenerate.
Sustainable is a tricky word (like ecology). It is difficult to know what the population levels should be in an unaltered state, if the habitats are already degraded. However, I have some difficulty in understanding your points in the third paragraph of your posting, especially the last sentence.
Hurricanes have affected the ORA hatchery in Florida, so typhoons in the Philippines are not different concerning their impact on EASTI's hatchery in Banao. The more infrastructure one builds into a hatchery, the more there is to lose (especially for the investors). In the case of Banao, the raceways were built out of bamboo and rubber tarpaulins. EASTI managed to salvage the pumps and much of the other paraphenalia. So, the financial loss was not big in comparison to ORA's.
Site selection is critical. Ferdinand selected the Banao site close to where the larvae and the plankton occur naturally in high abundance. It also allowed water to be pumped from the ocean (ORA uses wells). The new EASTI hatchery involves substantially more infrastructure and a better site (more protected from prevailing winds, typhoons etc) has been selected. So, there is a plan to deal with these types of problems and it is being implemented. Construction started at another location before typhoon Durian happened.
clarionreef
Advanced Reefer
- Location
- San Francisco
After a brief knee jerk dalliance with the automatically pro aquaculture industry...I came to relize that it misses nearly every target we aimed for.
Except for the lone example that was just wiped out...It has increasingly come to symbolize industrial farming as opposed to fisherfolk welfare and their direct connection to ocean welfare.
If by putting fish collectors out of business we think the oceans will somehow be automatically served we are just being ignorant of the reality of fishing culture around the world.
They will fish for something and probably have a heavier hand on the reefs as before.
There are examples to observe where aquaculture has displaced the fisherman and the results are very sad.
The banning of fish collection in Baja in favor of lab culture of fishes has created enmity and distrust of urban scientists, marine institutes and nearly anyone who shows up in the village w/ a clipboard.
The fish collectors naturally turned to killing food fishes and removing bio-mass from the reefs by a hundred fold and more.
Not one ounce of reeflife was saved but a great deal more was lost.
Traditionally, tropicals were seen as an alternative to depleted food fish stocks...now the fisherman are being driven back to killing everything over 8 inches in order to make a living as "coral reef politicians, light skinned university types and sci-fi folks[ claiming pseudo scientific endeavors alledgedly for the good of the people] drive them off their own traditional community reefs w/out involving them!
We have witnessed incredible falsehoods claimed against the fisherman as university and institutional people sought to usurp the resource for themselves and leave the villages by the side of the road.
Angling for government favor and grant money, these guys would slander the unrepresented fisherman and demonize them. Then they would claim that they would produce all the species and abundance needed ....all on top of the live rock farm in the shallows...and put some back for posterity.
To administrators who knew nothing at all...this sounded wonderful. And so it came to pass. The fisherman were ruined....and the marine institute prospered[ with out producing and raising a single fish for the market in three years]
So, back to the sea the fisherman went...poaching, smuggling, spearfishing, long lining, and generally killing far more then the few buckets of tropicals they used to collect.
The catch records of fishes taken legally are in invoice books along w/ their tonnages. In lieu of tropicals..we can prove the bio-mass lost instead...in a community over 3 full years if any instituional reefs politician were truly interested.
The trade-off of slow growing food fish from quick recruiting tropicals is a stunning difference in scale.
Its like a factor of thousands of kilos of environmentally expensive marinelife [ predators] to one kilo of environmenatlly inexpensive marinelife[ herbivores/planktovores].Culture an easy species [ nearly all Nemos]...yet still lose the reef?
Make anyone feel better?
Feed a labcoat...buy tank raised.
...feed a hundred fisherman...insist on wild caught!
Steve
ps. The best example of community involvement in village style aquaculture was just wiped out in the Philippine typhoon of late and we are left now w/ few kinds of fish culture done right for the good of the fisherman.
Except for the lone example that was just wiped out...It has increasingly come to symbolize industrial farming as opposed to fisherfolk welfare and their direct connection to ocean welfare.
If by putting fish collectors out of business we think the oceans will somehow be automatically served we are just being ignorant of the reality of fishing culture around the world.
They will fish for something and probably have a heavier hand on the reefs as before.
There are examples to observe where aquaculture has displaced the fisherman and the results are very sad.
The banning of fish collection in Baja in favor of lab culture of fishes has created enmity and distrust of urban scientists, marine institutes and nearly anyone who shows up in the village w/ a clipboard.
The fish collectors naturally turned to killing food fishes and removing bio-mass from the reefs by a hundred fold and more.
Not one ounce of reeflife was saved but a great deal more was lost.
Traditionally, tropicals were seen as an alternative to depleted food fish stocks...now the fisherman are being driven back to killing everything over 8 inches in order to make a living as "coral reef politicians, light skinned university types and sci-fi folks[ claiming pseudo scientific endeavors alledgedly for the good of the people] drive them off their own traditional community reefs w/out involving them!
We have witnessed incredible falsehoods claimed against the fisherman as university and institutional people sought to usurp the resource for themselves and leave the villages by the side of the road.
Angling for government favor and grant money, these guys would slander the unrepresented fisherman and demonize them. Then they would claim that they would produce all the species and abundance needed ....all on top of the live rock farm in the shallows...and put some back for posterity.
To administrators who knew nothing at all...this sounded wonderful. And so it came to pass. The fisherman were ruined....and the marine institute prospered[ with out producing and raising a single fish for the market in three years]
So, back to the sea the fisherman went...poaching, smuggling, spearfishing, long lining, and generally killing far more then the few buckets of tropicals they used to collect.
The catch records of fishes taken legally are in invoice books along w/ their tonnages. In lieu of tropicals..we can prove the bio-mass lost instead...in a community over 3 full years if any instituional reefs politician were truly interested.
The trade-off of slow growing food fish from quick recruiting tropicals is a stunning difference in scale.
Its like a factor of thousands of kilos of environmentally expensive marinelife [ predators] to one kilo of environmenatlly inexpensive marinelife[ herbivores/planktovores].Culture an easy species [ nearly all Nemos]...yet still lose the reef?
Make anyone feel better?
Feed a labcoat...buy tank raised.
...feed a hundred fisherman...insist on wild caught!
Steve
ps. The best example of community involvement in village style aquaculture was just wiped out in the Philippine typhoon of late and we are left now w/ few kinds of fish culture done right for the good of the fisherman.
Awesome responses! See you just can't get that kind of information from the hobby.
Peter those were great descriptives and put very eloquently. Sorry for the fog bomb at the end but you essentially nailed it and interpreted what I was trying to say perfectly.
Steve, Ive seen/heard of soo many operations regarding various other industry/trade with almost identicle misinformed/uneducated admins/governing agencies that there is no question in my mind that you speak the truth. And more often than not just base there rulings on the most irrelevent things. "Well he seemed sincere, he said he was saving the environment, he had a plan.."It amazes me how common that is.
Great points, it is soaking in
-Justin
Peter those were great descriptives and put very eloquently. Sorry for the fog bomb at the end but you essentially nailed it and interpreted what I was trying to say perfectly.
Steve, Ive seen/heard of soo many operations regarding various other industry/trade with almost identicle misinformed/uneducated admins/governing agencies that there is no question in my mind that you speak the truth. And more often than not just base there rulings on the most irrelevent things. "Well he seemed sincere, he said he was saving the environment, he had a plan.."It amazes me how common that is.
Great points, it is soaking in
-Justin
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